


The Lost Days

by willowoftheriver



Category: Dark Knight (2008), Silent Hill
Genre: Background Slash, Child Abuse, Crossover, Cults, Gen, Immolation, Implied Relationships, Insanity, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Mutilation, Past Abuse, Punishment, Religious Fanaticism, Scars, the Joker's Scars, the mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:12:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Joker wasn't born in Gotham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the beast you made of me

Would you like to know how I got these scars?

Hehe. Yeah, I know. I’ve told you before, several times. And each of those stories were quite, uh, _different_ from one another. Honestly, I have so many stories that I can’t quite remember them all—half the poor rotting stiffs in the cemetery in the Narrows went into that eternal night with some variation ringing in their ears, thinking that I’d shared some great personal confidence with them just before I severed their jugular or blew them up.

Little, uh, lawyer girl, the esteemed Miss Dawes—now _she_ got to mull over my story for a while, before her unfortunate . . . hehe . . . kaboom. What was it I told her? I can’t exactly remember. Something about a wife, I think, who got carved up. And then I did this to myself, to try to make her smile again.

Oh, no no no no, Batsy. Don’t be jealous. I’ve never had a wife. You’re my one and only.

That’s why I’m telling you this. Or maybe there’s a new chemical imbalance in my brain that’s just decided to pre _sent_ itself. I’m not sure. Or maybe, since I’ve heard all about that tragic, ahem, incident in the alley from your childhood, I’ve been moved to share.

Remember the first time I tried to tell you about my scars? You didn’t want to listen, then. Maybe ‘cause I’d set those Rottweilers on you, or maybe you were just pissed about my little game with the ferries.

Hehe. Haha. You’re listening now though, aren’t you? Eager to find out if there was any truth to some of the stories I’ve told you? I’ve talked about tragic childhood accidents and self-mutilation and sadistic mobsters and abusive asylum orderlies and really, _really_ incompetent hairdressers—honestly, anything I could think up and get from my head to my mouth.

Of course, so many stories and so much insanity means the true past is really nothing more than a blur. Your mommy and daddy lying dead in the alley filth is still as clear to you as if you were seeing it right now, but the day I got these scars, and how it happened? It’s so faded that sometimes it’s not even there. Some days, my past is what I want it to be, and that’s my truth. Options are always the best! Hahaha.

But today, you’ve won the lottery, Batsy. I remember. And the cat has, hehe, finally decided to let go of my tongue.

So, are you ready? Braced for the conclusion of the mystery?

Just, ah, sit back and relax and make sure to listen! There will be a quiz afterward.

So.

I don’t remember where I’m from. I know it wasn’t good old Gotham, but other than that? Nothing. It was, uh, a small town, though. Cold all the time. Miserable. One of those places where everybody thinks they know everybody else’s business but—no. No, they don’t.

My mother was . . . a monster, and a fiend, and, oh, oh haha, yes, a hyp-o-crite. Because, you see, despite everything she did, she was also a religious fanatic.

Nonono. Don’t look at me that way. She was. One of those ranting, pathological _freaks_ who’s so obsessed with their pathetic little deity and its _rules_ that it dictates every single thing they do!

Mommy, you see, thought kiddies were the product of sin, and that to make up for that, they had to be good little boys and devote themselves to the church for every hour of every day. And if they didn’t, and sometimes even when they did, a beating was always, hehe, _cleansing_ for the soul.

My father, or, uh, the man my mother _said_ was my father, believed the same thing. His daughter, my half-sister, oh what was her name . . .? Claudia, was a _goooood_ girl. She spent all her time studying her prayer books and her bible like a perfect little future fanatic, but she could never make Daddy happy. She was black and blue and broken all the time, no matter what she did.

Me, on the other hand—I never tried to please Mommy-dearest. I found church and scriptures so  . . . _boring_. I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to go outside and play, even if she beat me when I got home. The pain—hehe. You get used to it. Learn to love it.

So, one day, when I was like, five or six, after she’s done slapping me for, ah, whatever reason, she sits me down by the window with a bible and tells me that I have to study it all afternoon, until she gets back from work.

But I was really—uh huh—pissed, for some reason. I hated her, _so much_ that I just . . . _couldn’t take it_.

In my, my rage, I tore out every page of that bible and shredded them into tiny little pieces, and then I left them on the floor and went outside and walked to this, uh, this amusement park. Our town was so shitty, but it had a _great_ amusement park. I rode the rides and walked through the funhouse, with all the, the clowns, and I got some candy, and played with some other boys, ones a little older than me. Some _heathen_ boys, some nonbelieving children of whores! And I was so _happy_! Like I was free! Like, like everything I was so upset about earlier had gone away!

But, uh . . . not for long. Not. For. Long.

When Mo _ther_ found me, she was so angry she was shaking. She could barely resist hitting me right there in front of everybody. But she still broke my arm dragging me back to the house. Squeezed so hard she just . . . _snapped it_.

Once we were away from, ha, _prying_ _eyes_ , she threw all the ripped up pages at me and started hitting and kicking, throwing me around the room, ranting as she did it. She told me that I was filth, that I was unworthy of salvation and that I was going to rot in the flames of hell because of how horrible I was. She asked me why I couldn’t be more like Claudia, why god had cursed her with a child as blasphemous as me.

Of course, I couldn’t answer. I was a little bit busy, ahem, bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. I didn’t even notice what she was doing, when she went to one of the cabinets and got this, this little perry knife.

“Did playing with those heathens make you _smile_ , boy?” she asked me. “Is that why you spat in the face of God, because they could make you smile where She could not?”

She picked me up by my hair and threw me over the kitchen table. And that— _that’s_ when I got, hahahahahaha, scared. When she held me down and put the knife in my mouth, that’s when I started to cry.

“Oh, why so serious?” she asked. “This way, you’ll always be smiling, no matter what you do! Isn’t that what you want? Why. So. Serious?”

And.

So, Batsy. There you have it. The story that every psychiatrist at Arkham has been chomping at the bit to be told. That so many people have gone to their graves thinking they’ve heard.

Was it everything you’d imagined?

Other than me, you’re the only living person who knows the truth behind the scars. Sometimes, hehe, you might be the only person, period. You know, when I decide to pick and choose. And, uh, let’s keep it just between you and me, yeah?

But don’t go feeling _sorry_ for me. I’m still the same homicidal maniac you know and love, just like you’re the same inexplicably bat themed vigilante you’ve always been, despite the dead parents.

Maybe experiences do . . . _define_ us, in a way. If Mommy and Daddy hadn’t been shot dead right in front of your eyes, would you have decided to dress up like a giant rodent and hunt criminals? If Mommy hadn’t decided to give me my permanent smile, would I have decided that blowing up buildings with innocent citizens inside is immensely humorous?

Hehe. Maybe not.

But I can’t help but thinking that, somehow, even if things had been completely different, _we_ still would’ve been. Even with all our traumas stripped away, with our personalities and motives boiled down to bare bones, we still would’ve _completed_ each other.

Though, it’s more interesting this way, isn’t it?

Hahahahahahahahaha.

 


	2. you've set it running free

What happened after?

Well, hehe. That’s a strange question. No one’s ever asked me that before. I guess they just look at me and, uh, _assume_. But I suppose that every story does have an _epilogue_ , so to speak—except the ones about death, of course, and if continued long enough, all stories do inevitably end that way. Yours will, one day, and so will mine. Maybe at the same time. Maybe one day, I’ll do something so unforgivable and horrific that you’ll decide we _can’t_ do this forever, and the unstoppable force and the unmovable object will do the only thing they can: destroy each other.

Hahaha. That’s the way I want to go.

But, I digress. My story. The _after._ That’s what you want to hear.

Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as interesting as the _before_ , but we’ve come this far. Why quit now?

As I said, all stories end in death, sooner or later. Mommy’s came sooner.

Nononono _no_. What did I _tell_ you about _looking_ at me that way? I didn’t kill her. I will admit to being a, hehehe, naughty little boy, but no five-or-six year old is physically capable of murder.

Eh. The murder of an adult, at any rate.

Anyway.

After she stitched my face up—with her sewing needle—I seem to remember life going on. She told anyone who asked that it was one of the, ha, _heathens_ who had carved me up. Re _ligious_ dis _crimination_ , she said. _Look at what they did to my poor, hideous baby!_

And then one day, so soon after that . . . haha. Haha. Haha. She was just dead.

I _can’t_ quite remember what she looked like, but the words “ugly” and “old” spring to mind. She’d had me _late_ in life. I guess after the unfortunate, uh, fate of her other kid, she’d decided to try again. Second time’s the charm!

Oh, didn’t I mention my siblings before? Just little degraded Claudia?

She was on Daddy’s side. I had one on Mommy’s side, too. A sister. A _less_ a.

I remember her sometimes, because I did see a picture, once. She looked like I, ah, _felt_. So-very-serious. She made it to like, seven, I think, before she went up like a roman candle during a house fire. Extra-crispy kiddies are the best kind!

Oh, right. We were discussing Mommy and her . . . su _dd_ en _de_ mise.

As I said, she was getting up there, but her end was less clogged arteries and more . . . _Harvey Dent_. All those burns. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Probably what Alessa had looked like—well done. No pink left in the middle!

Needless to say, there was a closed coffin. Not that I minded. My goodbye was spit to the headstone. I never did find out how she ended up, uh, deep-fried, but then again, I never asked.

The only problem her death caused me was the a _cute_ and pr _essing_ lack of a place to sleep. And food. And clothing. Daddy, you see, wouldn’t let any little bastard children under his roof, so he sent me to the local orphanage. Church-run, of course. The pro _pri_ etors believed in all the same tenets Mommy had, but while she had provided some food with her beatings, they were frequently a bit _less_ generous.

Claudia came to visit me once. She was older than me. I think she was like, twelve or thirteen. She, uh, talked to me, about something—quoting scriptures at me, maybe trying to console me.

But all I did was look at her. At her _face_. Bruised and swollen and disgusting. Yellow and green and blue and black and purple.

And I realized: that was my _future_.

I mean, pain? Pain is fine and all. Hysterical, really. But if I’m going to be receiving it, shouldn’t I at least be able to give some, too? Just a little bit? There are two sides to _sado_ masochism, after all.

But right then, the future looked very _onesided_ to me. So much that I couldn’t even find the humor in it. All pain and no play makes Jack a very dull boy, and I felt that I would only get _duller_ the longer I stayed.

So as soon as the _oppor_ tunity presented itself, I ran, as far as I could. I ended up somewhere just as, hehe, ugly and horrible as where I’d been, but in the midst of all the filth and the scum and the dregs of humanity, I was more at home than I had ever been. I learned that people _under_ est _imated_ me. They looked at me and saw a helpless, damaged little boy, alone in the big bad world, and thought they could take _ad_ vantage.

Ha. Ha. Ha. The joke was always on them. And I thrived on it. So much so, the mob took notice eventually.

They liked me. Uh, a lot. Because, see, when a big Italian with a scar across his eye walks up to you on the street, you automatically think, _hitman_. When a blond twelve year old boy with a permanent smile walks up, you think, _abused child_.

Until he pulls out a gun and shoots you in the face.

But the mob—the mob’s all about the _money_. It’s the only thing they care about. And that’s where we disagreed. I’d look around, at all these rich fucks, buying shit they don’t need, and the cops and the lawyers just _letting_ them, turning on all of their ‘morals’ and ‘standards’ for the sake of a buck. They were like, like _dogs_ , mongrels chasing their tails, or a schizophrenic staring at the imaginary circles on the ceiling of his cell. All their energy and manpower, spent on the acquisition and protection of money, with no end in sight.

Hehe. And they say _I’m_ crazy. Whadda they call doing something over and over again and never realizing that everything you’re struggling for is nothing more than a demented bad joke?

So, uh, one day. One day I decide that I want to give the mob per _spect_ ive. I want to show them how little they really are. How _easily_ the thing they live, and die, for can be taken away.

How money is only beautiful as it burns.

That was when I realized that ripping off the mob was, haha, so much better than working for them. That was when I realized that _conformity_ is _insanity_. It’s shackles, a ball and a chain. Chaos is the only freedom.

And so, that’s what I became. An Agent of Chaos. As I told, hehehe, poor Harvey, I upset the established order. I strip away the niceties and force people to _examine_ themselves, to stare into the deepest, darkest reaches of their minds.

What Harvey found there wasn’t a white knight.

But that’s what I l _ov_ e about you, Brucey. Everything I’ve done, and yet, the blackest part of your psyche is still locked away, with padlocks and chains. The Bat’s a part of it, a way to vent the rage, an insight into your twisted little soul, but it’s not the extent.

Every nameless thug on the street is Joe Chill to you, aren’t they? And I am, too, sometimes. When you, haha, beat us, all you’re really doing is what you wish you had been able to _that night_. You try to _rip_ the revenge you were denied out of our twitching bodies.

But you don’t kill us, no matter how much you’d like to. That’s what’s still locked up, see, and it’s _there_ , no matter how much you deny it. It’s in _all_ of us. It’s what makes you no different from me, and me no different from Harvey.

I just haven’t been able to make it come out to . . . _play_ yet.

But I’m a _patient_ man, and we’re going to be doing this _forever_.

I have all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a really, really long time ago, when I believe I was obsessed with the Dark Knight and Silent Hill at the same time. It just sat there on my computer ever since, until I finally just went 'what the hell' and posted it.


End file.
